Owing to a war between the Snakes and a tribe to the southward named Arcs, they were unable to go on and returned to the upper Missouri in May, 1743, somewhere erecting a stone monument to commemorate their entrance into the region. Having done this they went to the Saskatchewan valley by way of their Fort La Reine. Jealousy of their success and changes in the governorship of Canada resulted in the overthrow of the Verendryes, but Jonquire later, coming to the head of the government, determined to profit by their investigations and planned two expeditions to the Pacific, one over the course Verendrye had pursued, and the other by the waters of the Saskatchewan. These appear to have had little success, yet some of the men reached the Rocky Mountains, and were there in 1753. The war with England then prevented further organised explorations by the French. Several accounts of the existence of a large river beginning at the head of the Missouri and flowing west to the Pacific had been given by the Amerinds, as already noted, Dupratz having heard one from a native of the Yazoo country.[54] This man said he had himself ascended the Missouri to its source and there found this other river, which he followed for some distance, wars preventing him from going through to the ocean into which he was told it entered. Several maps of about 1750 gave a supposed course of this river, which was called the Great River of the West. Jonathan Carver[55] also told of this stream, called the Oregon, in his book describing the travels he made in 1766-68 into the region of the upper Mississippi; but he did not go there.[56] The Dane, Bering, under Russian patronage, in 1741, had marked out a path to the New World from a totally different direction from any taken by the other nations; he came from the West, from Kamtchatka, by the far northern route. The Russians followed and began to explore down the North-west coast. [Illustration: Great Fountain Geyser—Yellowstone Park. From _Wonderland, 1901_—Northern Pacific Railway.]